Jim is a sinner and a scoffer, and Bill is an earnest, thorough, respectable old freethinker, and consequently they often get a War Cry or a tract sent inside their exchanges—somebody puts it in for a joke.
Long years ago—long years ago Bill and Jim were sweet on a rose of the bush—or a lily of the goldfields—call her Lily King. Both courted her at the same time, and quarrelled over her—fought over her, perhaps—and were parted by her for years. But that’s all bygones. Perhaps she loved Bill, perhaps she loved Jim—perhaps both; or, maybe, she wasn’t sure which. Perhaps she loved neither, and was only stringing them on. Anyway, she didn’t marry either the one or the other. She married another man—call him Jim Smith. And so, in after years, Bill comes across a paragraph in a local paper, something like the following:
On July 10th, at her residence, Eureka Cottage, Ballarat-street, Tally Town, the wife of James Smith of twins (boy and girl); all three doing well.
And Bill marks it with a loud chuckle and big crosses, and sends it along to Jim. Then Bill sits and thinks and smokes, and thinks till the fire goes out, and quite forgets all about putting that necessary patch on his pants.
And away down on Auckland gum-fields, perhaps, Jim reads the par with a grin; then grows serious, and sits and scrapes his gum by the flickering firelight in a mechanical manner, and—thinks. His thoughts are far away in the back years—faint and far, far and faint. For the old, lingering, banished pain returns and hurts a man’s heart like the false wife who comes back again, falls on her knees before him, and holds up her trembling arms and pleads with swimming, upturned eyes, which are eloquent with the love she felt too late.
It is supposed to be something to have your work published in an English magazine, to have it published in book form, to be flattered by critics and reprinted throughout the country press, or even to be cut up well and severely. But, after all, now we come to think of it, we would almost as soon see a piece of ours marked with big inky crosses in the soiled and crumpled rag that Bill or Jim gets sent him by an old mate of his—the paper that goes thousands of miles scrawled all over with smudgy addresses and tied with a piece of string.
MITCHELL DOESN’T BELIEVE IN THE SACK
“If ever I do get a job again,” said Mitchell, “I’ll stick to it while there’s a hand’s turn of work to do, and put a few pounds together. I won’t be the fool I always was. If I’d had sense a couple of years ago, I wouldn’t be tramping through this damned sand and mulga now. I’ll get a job on a station, or at some toff’s house, knocking about the stables and garden, and I’ll make up my mind to settle down to graft for four or five years.”
“But supposing you git the sack?” said his mate.
“I won’t take it. Only for taking the sack I wouldn’t be hard up to-day. The boss might come round and say: